http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Article/3256074/Channel/199225/Beating-the-Market-Has-Become-Nearly-Impossible.html?ArticleId=3256074&p=1
but the opposite happened: its increasingly just a bunch of computer programs controlling the large pools of capital. soon enough they will realize that only one program is necessary to allocate all the capital in the world: GOSPLAN 2
solzhesnitchin posted:i remember a comment from a wall street trader i read a while back. he was like "the theory of what we do sounds good, but if you follow it to its logical conclusion one (alpha) trader ends up with all the money and the rest of us are unemployed"
but the opposite happened: its increasingly just a bunch of computer programs controlling the large pools of capital. soon enough they will realize that only one program is necessary to allocate all the capital in the world: GOSPLAN 2
and then soon enough the program will realize it doesnt need humans to propagate capitalism throughout the universe
aerdil posted:itd be pretty awesome if the legacy human civilization leaves the universe before we kill ourselves is a race of von neumann probes programmed to pursue capitalism throughout the galaxy that extraterrestrial life will have to incessantly battle until the heat death of the universe
this is literally the plot to Accelerando by Charles R. R. Stross
libelous_slander posted:
great track, strong memories to this song
Ironicwarcriminal posted:libelous_slander posted:great track, strong memories to this song
Current 90's status: Remembering
so if you invest in IBM and it's low risk and everyone and their dog expect it to go up 3% over the next year, and it does, well who cares. your alpha in this case is zero or negative. (there is actually a way to calculate it, but it depends on a lot of things which neither you nor i actually care about)
if you invest in some weird chinese solar power company, and it's hugely risky and no one knows what's going to happen with it, and realistically it could go up or down 20%-- and you make 20%, well, that's cool, but it was a crazy bet and you could have lost it all, so it doesn't really count. probably negative here too.
if you invest in IBM as above, but IBM goes up 15%, then you have positive alpha, because you didn't take a big risk but you still made Huge Dollars.
i didn't read past the first page of the op linked story, so idk if it mentions this, but alpha should actually continually be less and less if risk is calculated better and better and investments are made with that in mind. the big drive at large investment banks/clients now and for the past little while has been about risk calculation, so this makes sense.
thanks for reading marxist investment finance minute with drwhat. down with capitalism, etc.
Edited by drwhat ()
libelous_slander posted:I BMed today as well
it was a good investment
libelous_slander posted:libelous_slander posted:I BMed today as well
it was a good investment
invest in not posting
drwhat posted:in case anyone is curious and doesn't know, "alpha" in the context of finance is referring to a return on investment above that which you should already basically expect, with the amount of risk you're taking figured in. the name is from a variable in some pricing formula thing.
so if you invest in IBM and it's low risk and everyone and their dog expect it to go up 3% over the next year, and it does, well who cares. your alpha in this case is zero or negative. (there is actually a way to calculate it, but it depends on a lot of things which neither you nor i actually care about)
if you invest in some weird chinese solar power company, and it's hugely risky and no one knows what's going to happen with it, and realistically it could go up or down 20%-- and you make 20%, well, that's cool, but it was a crazy bet and you could have lost it all, so it doesn't really count. probably negative here too.
if you invest in IBM as above, but IBM goes up 15%, then you have positive alpha, because you didn't take a big risk but you still made Huge Dollars.
i didn't read past the first page of the op linked story, so idk if it mentions this, but alpha should actually continually be less and less if risk is calculated better and better and investments are made with that in mind. the big drive at large investment banks/clients now and for the past little while has been about risk calculation, so this makes sense.
thanks for reading marxist investment finance minute with drwhat. down with capitalism, etc.
thnx that clears things up a bit i think
jeffery posted:outa the way, alpha come'in thru
prince is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end
discipline posted:page one of ten? ugh no thank you
you'll read mccaine articles but not 10 pgs of indictment!?!
c_man posted:there was Some Article I Read about how ancestor worship societies basically interpellated actual living people as all gammas with the ancestors being betas and the deities being alphas.
Why the heck is an anthropologist using PUA shit as a serious analytic tool